Author: John B. Chilton

My prayer is about peace against anxiety. I pray that all this concentrated anxiety will not produce chaos and ill will and frustration. My prayer is about the order that might very well be established if General Convention finds a way to honor and bless same-sex relationships. I am glad that those resolutions devoted to such blessings will be considered in their customary ways by the Prayer Book, Liturgy, and Music committee. That would make available an ordered way of life that will make a great and graceful witness to the Anglican Communion and to the world.

I came to General Convention worried that Rowan Williams might be here to twist arms over the Windsor Report, the demands of Primates, dioceses jumping ship, human sexuality, same-sex blessings and marriage, or other points of contention in the greater Anglican Communion. I am pleasantly surprised that he hasn’t done much of that at all.

Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies and members of her council of advice met with several reporters yesterday after their meeting with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

You can read elsewhere about Wednesday’s hot debates at General Convention, the panel presentation including the Archbishop of Canterbury, and highlights from the day’s sermons and proceedings. As Convention got into high gear on its first full day, I began my work as self-declared Title IV wonk. Here’s my primer for all you Title IV neophytes out there.

IntegrityTV has an interview with Deputy Michael Spencer, one of eight LGBT deputies who met yesterday with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

More than thirty people spoke to a packed hearing room, and not a single one spoke against the resolution. As the hearing concluded, one committee member was given the floor and spoke haltingly about some of the reasons people had given him for opposing moving forward with this limited trial of marriage equality.

Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, and four members of her council of advice met for half an hour today with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The topic was the distinctive governance system of the Episcopal Church, and the friction that system sometimes creates for Williams and others in the Anglican Communion.

The other work of convention is about networking, meeting people, talking about what others are doing to love and serve the Lord. Over lunch, I talk with a priest who sits beside me about a colleague of his who would like to come to Maine… new connections. I run into retired Bishop Chilton for a few minutes talk about ministry in the Diocese of Haiti

Some of you may not know that while Victor Rivera was bishop in San Joaquin, and for many years afterward, he insisted that women should not be ordained. He didn’t go to Nedi’s ordination as a priest, and he had never taken communion from her, over the more than 25 years that she served as priest. I asked Nedi later how he had come to change his mind. She said to me, “He didn’t change his mind; he changed his heart.”